Larry Summers Continuing Campaign To Be First President Of The Bitcoin Central Bank

The great man thinks that this bitcoin thing—or something like it—has a future; that one day, bitcoin—or something like it that maybe was a little more savvy about things?—will be as ubiquitous as hotel internet or Chase ATMs in Midtown. But if that’s going to happen, it’s going to need a guiding hand, a figurehead whose mere presence puts everyone at ease. Perhaps a former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University president who, if people were a little less goddamned sensitive, would still be Harvard president or chairman of a certain central bank?

Bitcoin or any other payments technology, Mr. Summers said, will need to shed the “hyperlibertarian aura,” which is hindering widespread acceptance. Regulation, he added, would certainly help.

“If the day ever comes where Bitcoin counts for an appreciable fraction of commerce that takes place in the world economy, on that day it will be because that commerce is regulated and subject to safeguards and people believe that something other than a mathematical algorithm is ensuring that their money will not be stolen,” he said.